I don't know if this is an external ISBN database issue or with the way Calibre processes data it gets from the external ISBN databases but here is what i notice:

Often when I do an ISBN look-up to get metadata information, Calibre would return the full details of the book with part of the title missing. For instance, the ISBN 9781414407487 is for the book "Death and Dying: Ending of Life Issues". In this case, Calibre provides the subtitle, "End of Life Issues", and does not display "Death and Dying". So, I end up with metadata looking like this:

Title: End of Life Issues
Author(s): Sandra M. Alters

etc.

In other words, Calibre is often missing the title and only providing the subtitle of the volume.

What's going on?

Is this an external database issue or an issue with the way Calibre parses externally received data?